Sunday, November 4, 2012

Death No More

John 11:32-44

November 4, 2012

My
grandmother, or as I would sometimes call her in Swedish, my Mormor – which
means mother’s mother – died three days after Phoebe was born.My parents, following my dad’s hunch that
this baby was on her way, rushed from Minnesota to Upstate New York and got to
our house the day I went into labor.Phoebe was born the next day.Two
days later we brought her home, made it through our first night, and the next
morning the call came that Gramma was gone.

Within
45 minutes my parents had packed, loaded their van and were gone, heading back
to Minnesota to help my uncle with final arrangements and the funeral.In those moments as they were packing I
remember sitting on the couch holding Phoebe, numb with shock, trying to
process what was happening.My thoughts
were like a tape on a continuous loop circling and re-circling through my
brain.“I have a beautiful baby
girl.I’m a mommy.Gramma is dead.Mom and Dad are leaving.I’m a mommy!”

Before
they left, both of my parents held and kissed Phoebe, and they hugged and
kissed me.My dad told me that it was
going to be all right.I had a beautiful
little daughter and I was going to be a good mom.It would be okay.But anyone who’s ever had a baby or lived
with someone who’s just had a baby knows that your postnatal self is like one
big hormonal pinball machine.You’re
happy.You’re sad.You’re elated.You’re in the depths of despair.All new parents are exhausted, but add in a
measure of grief to this mix and you’ve got a roller coaster ride of
crazy.

I
was a mommy.But I really wanted my
mommy.And my mommy wanted hers.The one thing that helped get me through
those first few days of learning how to care for my newborn daughter as well as
grieve my grandmother, was when my mother called to tell me that that Gramma
knew all about Phoebe.Up until that
phone call, it had haunted me to think that she had died and didn’t know that
Phoebe had come into the world.I think
it was my sister-in-law who went and told her that Phoebe had been born.Gramma was mentally sharp right until the
minute she died, so she knew exactly what that meant.Her 21st great grandchild had come
into the world.She loved the name we’d
chosen.She was thrilled that we’d given
Phoebe the middle name Hope because that is also my mother’s middle name.She knew that Phoebe was well and that I was
well, and then, as though she’d been given some sort of cosmic permission, she
died, peacefully and quickly.No
suffering.No lingering.In fact one of the doctors who attended her
hugged my dad afterward and told him that she’d died a good Swedish death.Everything, every organ, every bodily system,
just shut down at once.

Phoebe
was born.My grandmother died.I understood then that the circle of life
isn’t just a beloved Disney song.It is
real.And as much as I missed and
grieved my Mormor, I had this brand new little life in my arms that needed
me.So we went on.

But
that time made me realize just how tenuous the line is between life and
death.We know intellectually that death
is a part of life.We recognize our
mortality and the mortality of others.It’s there.It’s real.But that knowledge doesn’t absolve us from
grief, from loss, from the anguish that follows.

That’s
where I think Mary and Martha are in this passage from John’s gospel.Death would have been an even more intimate
experience for them than for us.There
were no hospitals or life support machines.Death, most often, would have occurred at home, in the midst of the
family, in the midst of life.Yet the
grief and the loss and the sorrow were still there.That anguish was as real for Mary and Martha,
the sisters of Lazarus, as it was for me, for any of us.

Our
passage today begins after Jesus has heard that Lazarus has died, after Martha
meets him and tells him that his presence would have prevented Lazarus’
death.Jesus gives Martha the words of
assurance that death is not the final word, and Martha declares her
belief.Our part of the story begins
with Mary.Mary hears from Martha that
Jesus, the teacher has come, and she goes quickly to meet him.The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible
translates many things well, but I think its language loses the force, the
punch of what happens in this moment.Where it says that Mary got up quickly, I think would be better
translated as jumps up.Mary hears Jesus
has come, at last and apparently too late, and she jumps up.She rushes out to meet him.The NRSV states that she knelt at his
feet.But a more apt translation would
be she threw herself at his feet.This
is no calm, collected greeting of a beloved teacher and friend.This is a grieving, desperate, even angry
woman who throws herself down in front of the one person she believed could
have kept her brother from dying.

“Lord,
if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

In
other words, where were you?Why didn’t
you get here faster, sooner?Why didn’t
you do something?

We
read that Jesus’ response to Mary’s tears and the tears of all the people
around her is that he was “greatly disturbed in spirit.”But what does that mean?Most often I have heard this interpreted as
Jesus was moved by compassion and remorse and his own grief for Lazarus.But one commentator sees this disturbance of
spirit as Jesus being frustrated, disappointed and even angry.The people who should have had some glimmer,
some grasping of what and who Jesus is still don’t fully understand.They still live by an old model of how the
world works.We live and we die and
we’re done.But the coming of Jesus has
irrevocably changed that model.Something
new has happened.Through him we have a
different kind of life, a new life.Death is no more.Why can’t they
see it?

So
Jesus asks, “Where have you laid him?”Then Jesus weeps.And his display
of emotion brings up mixed feelings in all those around him.“Look, he’s crying.He really loved Lazarus.Yeah, but if he could open up the eyes of the
blind man, why couldn’t he keep Lazarus from dying?”

Jesus
goes with Martha and Mary and the others to the tomb where they’d laid
Lazarus.There was a stone in front of
it, foreshadowing the stone that would block the entrance to Jesus’ own tomb,
and he tells Martha to take away the stone.She says, and I paraphrase, “Lord, Lazarus has been dead four days.It stinks.”

Learning
that Lazarus has been dead for four days wasn’t just to give the reader an
indication of passing time.In Jewish
tradition, it was believed that a person’s soul or shade hovered above the body
for the first three days after death.After the third day the soul would make its way to Sheol.Perhaps this was John’s way of making it clear,
to borrow from a beloved musical, that Lazarus was really and most sincerely
dead.

When
Martha tells Jesus that her brother has been dead four days and it really
stinks, Jesus tells her once again, as he did in the verses preceding this
passage, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of
God?”

When
the stone is rolled away, Jesus prays.And then he commands Lazarus to, “Come out!”Then he does something wonderful, yet I think
most of us miss it when we read this story.Jesus raises Lazarus, but then he calls on the community to “Unbind him,
let him go.”

Jesus
gives new life to Lazarus.But the
community is called to share in that experience of new life.

On
this day we participate in two important aspects of our life of faith.Today we observe the tradition of All Saint’s
Day.We lift up in our worship the
saints that have gone before us.We
remember our collective saints, men and women who have undergone persecution
and torment, who have literally given their lives for the faith.We number the women and men who have devoted
themselves to lives of service and witness, who have shown through their words
and their deeds the love of God to all people.And we remember our personal saints, our grandmothers and grandfathers,
our parents, our children, our friends, all of those people who in one way or
another contributed to the depth and meaning of our lives.

Today
we also recommit ourselves to stewardship, stewardship of our time and our
resources and our gifts and talents.We
acknowledge that while Jesus creates the new life that is all around us, we are
called to participate in that new life.We are called to unbind one another from the cloths of death that are
wrapped around us.Not only do we
celebrate the new thing that God is doing in our midst, we are called to be
bearers of that new thing to others.

So
how do these two aspects of our faith relate to one another?What is the connection?Believe me I’ve spent several weeks trying to
figure this out.And although I’m not
really sure I’ll ever have a complete answer, I think that the connection lies
somewhere in that line, that tenuous line between life and death.In remembering our saints, we remember that
life and death are never very far apart.We remember that life is both precious and fleeting.As stewards of God’s goodness, we also know
that we are called to live fully in the time we have.Life is both precious and fleeting so we need
to make sure that as many people as possible know of God’s goodness and love
and mercy.Isn’t that the fundamental
purpose of the Great Ends of the Church?

And
both our saints and our stewardship remind us of our reason to hope.The people who have gone before us had great
hope that God in Christ would swallow up death.Every tear of grief and sorrow would be wiped away.Death would be no more.

Death
will be no more.That is why we remember
our saints.That is why we live and serve
and give.That is our hope.That is our joy.Death is no more!In Christ we have new life.In Christ we live, now and forevermore.Let all God’s children say, “Amen!”